Jewish-Arab violence: perspectives of a dominant majority and a subordinate minority

In 2 studies, the authors investigated intergroup violence as perceived by Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. University and junior high school students judged Jewish-Arab clashes, which ended in shots fired at a crowd of either Jewish or Arab demonstrators. The authors hypothesized that judgments of these shootings would be contingent on 3 variables: the origin of the respondent, the origin of the shooter, and the level of danger to the shooter. The results tended to support those hypotheses: (a) Both Jewish and Arab respondents justified shootings by members of their own group more readily than those by members of the other group. (b) Jewish judgments of violence were associated more closely than Arab judgments with the danger that the demonstrators posed to the shooter. (c) The Jewish respondents referred to self-defense more often than did the Arab respondents to justify their judgments, whereas the Arab respondents referred more often to intergroup considerations. Those differences may reflect the disagreement between the majority and the minority on the issue that each group should take into consideration in cases of international violence.     

Acculturation attitudes, perceived attitudes of the majority, and adjustment of Israeli-Arab and Jewish-Ethiopian students to an Israeli University

The authors investigated adjustment to an Israeli university by students from two minority groups, Israeli Arabs and Jewish Ethiopians, as a function of their different acculturation attitudes (J. W. Berry, 1990). Social adjustment of both Arabs and Ethiopians was contingent on acculturation attitudes supporting participation with the majority. Psychological adjustment of both groups was negatively associated with personal acculturation preferences that deviated from the shared acculturation attitudes of the respective in-group (i.e., assimilation in the Arab group, and separation in the Ethiopian group). The perceived attitude of the majority also contributed to the psychological adjustment of both groups. Major theoretical implications are that both attitudes of the majority and adjustment to the in-group play an important role in psychological adjustment of immigrants.     

A beam of "chimeric" darkness: presence, interconnectedness, and transformation in the psychoanalytic treatment of a patient convicted of sex offenses

The paper puts forward the dimension created by analytic presence and the ensuing patient-analyst interconnectedness in the process of psychoanalytic treatment and change, particularly with more disturbed patients. Working within this dimension, at a fundamental level of contact and impact, opens up new possibilities of extending the reach of psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst's "presencing" and interconnectedness with the patient forge a living therapeutic entity that is not a one-person or two-person psychology, but an emergent two-in-one new entity that goes beyond the confines of the separate subjectivities of patient and analyst and the simple summation of the two. The paper describes the kind of knowledge, experience, and powerful therapeutic potential that comes into being through analytic "presencing" and patient-analyst interconnectedness, and particularly focuses on the chimeric element, or quality, of this interconnectedness. The term "chimera/chimerism"-chosen here for its wealth of mythological, genetic, biological, biomedicinal (chimeric proteins), and psychoanalytical associations-is used in this paper to highlight the complex quality of patient-analyst interconnectedness, especially in difficult, psychotic, psychically foreclosed, dissociative and perverse states. The author offers an extensive clinical account of psychoanalytic treatment of a patient convicted of sex offenses in order to illustrate "presencing," interconnectedness, and the extent and intricate emotional meaning of the extreme chimerism that this kind of (difficult) treatment entailed.     

Changes in Defensiveness and in Affective Distress Following Inpatient Treatment of Eating Disorders: Rorschach Comprehensive System and Self-Report Measures

Our objective in this study was to develop a Chinese version of the Responses to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ; Connor-Smith, Compas, Wadsworth, Thomsen, and Saltzman, 2000) and to evaluate its reliability and validity. The Chinese (C) RSQ (RSQ–C) exhibited moderate internal consistency and moderate test–retest reliability. Results of the confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the fit of a 3-factor model of voluntary coping and a separate 2-factor model of involuntary responses to stress were acceptable for the Chinese university sample. With regard to predictive validity, the Primary and Secondary Control Engagement Coping factors were associated with lower levels of depressive and anxious symptoms, whereas the Disengagement, Involuntary Engagement, and Involuntary Disengagement Coping factors were associated with higher levels of such symptoms.     

EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUAL RICHNESS ON WORD RECOGNITION IN POINTED AND UNPOINTED HEBREW

Forty Israeli adults, fluent readers of Hebrew, and 40 Israeli children, age 11‐12, participated in two studies which investigated the contextual facilitation and word frequency effects upon word recognition accuracy and reading rate while reading two types of Hebrew texts (pointed and unpointed). In the first experiment pointed Hebrew text was read more accurately and rapidly than unpointed text by both groups, but only the children's performances were significantly different on the two text types.

In the second experiment both groups displayed significant effects for context richness, word frequency and type of Hebrew text based upon an analysis of errors made when reading experimental sentences. These results challenge Levy's (1943) contention that unpointed Hebrew text is superior to pointed text and add support to the universality of contextual facilitation effects upon word recognition.     

Postwar Recovery to Stress Symptoms Ratio as a Measure of Resilience,Individual Characteristics,Sense of Danger,and Age

This study maintains that postwar resilience should be defined by the proportion of recovery from war adversity and level of postwar symptoms. We hypothesize first that four resilience-promoting factors will predict this measure of resilience. Second, these associations will be mediated by sense of postwar danger. Third, war-afflicted older people will be comparable to younger people on these variables. The sample included 829 Israeli adults who experienced the 2006 second Lebanon war. Results that have generally supported these hypotheses have been discussed in terms of the definition of resilience, the role of sense of danger in postwar adjustment, and the resilience of older people to war.     

Multimodal encoding in a simplified model of intracellular calcium signaling

Many cells use calcium signaling to carry information from the extracellular side of the plasma membrane to targets in their interior. Since virtually all cells employ a network of biochemical reactions for Ca²⁺ signaling, much effort has been devoted to understand the functional role of Ca²⁺ responses and to decipher how their complex dynamics is regulated by the biochemical network of Ca²⁺-related signal transduction pathways. Experimental observations show that Ca²⁺ signals in response to external stimuli encode information via frequency modulation (FM) or alternatively via amplitude modulation (AM). Although minimal models can capture separately both types of dynamics, they fail to exhibit different and more advanced encoding modes. By arguments of bifurcation theory, we propose instead that under some biophysical conditions more complex modes of information encoding can also be manifested by minimal models. We consider the minimal model of Li and Rinzel and show that information encoding can occur by AM of Ca²⁺ oscillations, by FM or by both modes (AFM). Our work is motivated by calcium signaling in astrocytes, the predominant type of cortical glial cells that is nowadays recognized to play a crucial role in the regulation of neuronal activity and information processing of the brain. We explain that our results can be crucial for a better understanding of synaptic information transfer. Furthermore, our results might also be important for better insight on other examples of physiological processes regulated by Ca²⁺ signaling.     

Multimodal encoding in a simplified model of intracellular calcium signaling

Many cells use calcium signaling to carry information from the extracellular side of the plasma membrane to targets in their interior. Since virtually all cells employ a network of biochemical reactions for Ca²⁺ signaling, much effort has been devoted to understand the functional role of Ca²⁺ responses and to decipher how their complex dynamics is regulated by the biochemical network of Ca²⁺-related signal transduction pathways. Experimental observations show that Ca²⁺ signals in response to external stimuli encode information via frequency modulation (FM) or alternatively via amplitude modulation (AM). Although minimal models can capture separately both types of dynamics, they fail to exhibit different and more advanced encoding modes. By arguments of bifurcation theory, we propose instead that under some biophysical conditions more complex modes of information encoding can also be manifested by minimal models. We consider the minimal model of Li and Rinzel and show that information encoding can occur by AM of Ca²⁺ oscillations, by FM or by both modes (AFM). Our work is motivated by calcium signaling in astrocytes, the predominant type of cortical glial cells that is nowadays recognized to play a crucial role in the regulation of neuronal activity and information processing of the brain. We explain that our results can be crucial for a better understanding of synaptic information transfer. Furthermore, our results might also be important for better insight on other examples of physiological processes regulated by Ca²⁺ signaling.     

WHOSE SLEEP IS IT,ANYWAY? OR ‘NIGHT MOVES’3

The analyst's ‘sleep’ during sessions is a puzzling, troubling, extreme experience, which has rarely been described in the psychoanalytic literature. The author presents a clinical illustration in which her recurring ‘sleep’ during the sessions was approached as an open, central issue. She attempts to explore, understand and integrate this experience theoretically and clinically, first by reviewing and examining the psychoanalytic literature on the subject and on related phenomena, and then, more particularly, by formulating her own explanation of it. She emphasises being in the grip of the psychoanalytic process, and the immersed involvement and converging of patient and analyst, which generate a conjoint state of deep experiential interconnectedness and impact on each other ‐ in particular the impact of the patient's inner world on the analyst. In this context, the author also refers to the notions of ‘the uncanny’, ‘fear of breakdown’ and dissociative self‐states and the mitigation of the patient's dissociative self‐experience via the analyst's vicarious dissociative experience.